Overview

The IS&T Research Computing Services (RCS) group supports members of the BU community who require access to advanced computing facilities and software and need training and consulting to maximize productivity with these resources. In addition to supporting the BU research community, RCS supports the ever-increasing number of academic courses using advanced computing facilities and/or software in their coursework. Expert RCS staff offer training and consulting and manage the Shared Computing Cluster (SCC), SCC OnDemand, storage, and software resources. BU has acquired 384 compute cores and 16 GPUs to support academic courses. These SCC Course Resources are integrated into the SCC and are managed by RCS. SCC Course Projects are automatically given priority access to this resource. RCS staff are available for training and consulting in support of your course.

Academic Support Features

Faculty may use any or all of the services listed here for your course(s). Please follow the guidelines in the Checklist to get access to them.

  • Accessing the SCC:

  • In-classroom training

  • Academic Software

    • For Machine Learning (ML) courses using Python, we have a module available to make it easier for your students to use ML software on the SCC

Faculty, please follow these guidelines two weeks before the semester starts:

  1. Each semester, in order to have your students added to your SCC course project, you must fill in the semesterly course request form. This will give us the information we need to add your students and also lets you request instruction for your TAs and/or students.
  2. Clean up your old SCC Project or create a new course project if you don’t already have one. If you are new to using the SCC, please also read up on SCC project management.
  3. Have your T.A./T.F. contact us at help@scc.bu.edu to get trained.
  4. If a customized in-classroom workshop is needed, send email to help@scc.bu.edu to request a meeting to discuss it.
  5. Test the software and workflows you plan to use in your course and, if needed, request software two weeks before the beginning of the semester.
  6. Please include the following statement in your course syllabus:
    “Student questions, requests for software installations, or problems regarding SCC usage should be handled first by the course instructor and/or TA/TF. If they are unable to help, the instructor or TA/TF should then contact Research Computing Services for further assistance.”